In 2010, five years after I started this blog, I published a slim volume of essays written at the turning of the Millennium, called Écritage. It was an outgrowth of my extensive correspondence on the Abbeyweb, an online discussion group of friends and followers of Edward Paul Abbey, author of The Monkey Wrench Gang and a bookshelf row of his essays and novels.

Yesterday I plucked a tattered pre-publication volume from my library and began reading through my thoughts and observations twen...